Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:JamesMLane/George W. Bush substance abuse controversy


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the miscellaneous page below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.  

The result of the discussion was keep, with the strong recommendation to add a short note on the top of the article about the reason behind the subpage to avoid assumptions of bad faith. Xavexgoem (talk) 02:28, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

User:JamesMLane/George W. Bush substance abuse controversy
More POV-ish and weaselly version of George W. Bush substance abuse controversy, maybe not a G10. Ten Pound Hammer and his otters • (Broken clamshells • Otter chirps • HELP) 22:51, 19 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Delete A POV is not the biggest problem -- it has been gathering dust for well over three years without any edits at all. A true orphan, and without being an essay or anything of user-value at all, it is eminently deletable.  Collect (talk) 23:06, 19 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete as both POV and orphan. No need to keep it around. Jclemens (talk) 23:15, 19 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment. The page is not POV.  On a controversial subject, it reports the allegations against Bush (identified as allegations, not stated as facts, and with citations given), reports Bush's responses (largely through verbatim quotations), and never adopts any of the allegations as facts.  If you're concerned about POV, go to the current text of George W. Bush substance abuse controversy and note how many times a form of "claim" is used to insinuate that Bush's critics are wrong. JamesMLane t c 08:04, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete. No possible policy based reason to keep this. Orphaned, POV, it even links to the actual WP article "for more information". - Mgm|(talk) 19:09, 20 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete per Collect. Stifle (talk) 19:33, 20 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete Abandoned POV and orphan.-- Ashbey Happy Holidays Ӝ 01:33, 21 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep or redirect to main user page - Not an orphan, because it was linked to by two pages before this MFD discussion, one of which is this discussion on the George W. Bush talk page. It isn't any worse than what is in the history of the George W. Bush article or in its talk archives. The only proper argument I can think of for its deletion is that it is visible to search engines; that can be fixed by either blanking the page, adding __NOINDEX__ to it, or redirecting it to the main user page. There is nothing so odious in the page to require its deletion, and deletion of this page would start off a terrible slippery slope, because userspace drafts are a common tool for dispute resolution in controversial articles like the George W. Bush article. Graham 87 12:10, 21 December 2008 (UTC)
 * A "draft" is one thing -- that implies that someone may actually edit it at some point. Is three years sufficient to indicate that it is, in fact, no longer a draft but an orphan? I could understand six months as a "slippery slope" to someone -- three years is already down to Dead Sea levels. Collect (talk) 19:07, 21 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, three years is sufficient time to indicate that the page is no longer being used. I won't climb the Reichstag dressed as Spider-Man if the page is deleted, because the page is summarised in the talk page archive I linked to above, but I can still think of no policy-based reason to outright delete the page except that it could be considered a POV fork. We don't normally delete long-inactive pages except user pages of people with almost no Wikipedia contributions, and I don't see why we should start now. Graham 87  05:40, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Collect, it was never intended that this page would develop into a stand-alone article. JamesMLane t c 08:04, 22 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Delete, per Collect. An orphaned page abandoned for over 3 years. Nsk92 (talk) 22:35, 21 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep per User:Graham87. "Userspace drafts are a common tool for dispute resolution in controversial articles like the George W. Bush article." travb (talk) 06:28, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep. I wrote this text not as a POV fork, but the opposite -- an attempted NPOV resolution of an edit war.  It was part of the discussion about how to address Bush's substance-abuse history.  If I had written, on the Bush talk page, "How about this...." and then given a proposed version, that proposed version would now be ensconced in the archives, along with the discussion of it.  Instead, for convenience, I made my proposal a sub-page.  Deletion would render unintelligible much of the archived discussion.  To be sure, few readers will ever go to that discussion, but if we're to maintain talk-page archives we might as well maintain pages like this one that are, in effect, part of the archived discussion. JamesMLane t c 08:04, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Is the intent, then, to have a permanent archive in userspace of a proposal about which no comments were made because you simply did not even offer it on the article talk page? IIRC, using user pages for "permanent archiving" of anything is verboten.  Is not three years quite enough, as the main article has certainly changed in that time? Collect (talk) 13:46, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
 * As I said above, James did offer the proposal on the George W. Bush talk page, and got plenty of comments about it. Would moving it somewhere like Talk:George W. Bush/User:JamesMLane's version of the George W. Bush substance abuse controversy satisfy your concerns about it being in userspace? (Note, I don't actually recommend doing this; adding __NOINDEX__ >, if anything, would be my preferred option.) Graham 87 13:55, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
 * With zero comments in three years, will it get a comment in the next three?  Userspace is not permanent storage.  By the way, I find more people talk about looking in the archives than actually read them -- I have now read several hundred pages of archives, and found no evidence than anyone else does . Collect (talk) 19:50, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't understand how you can keep saying it got "zero comments" when Graham has given you the link. This version was part of the discussion on the Bush talk page and so was properly commented on there, not on the talk page of the subpage where the version was presented.  Maybe the context will make this clearer.  One issue at the time was how the Bush article's presentation of substance-abuse information would fit in with the overall bio (concerns about where to place it, undue weight, etc.), so I gave my proposal as a fully integrated suggestion for how the entire section on Bush's personal life would look.  As a result, it was pretty long.  I could have just done a few paragraphs about booze and drugs, and presented them on the Bush talk page, but it was more informative to do the whole section -- which, IMO, made it too long to be conveniently stuck on the talk page.  That's the only reason I created a subpage.  Is it your view that, from now on, I should make such proposals as a whole huge insert on the article talk page, if I want to ensure that they're preserved? JamesMLane t c 20:43, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
 * no edits by anyone in over three years. (the talk page) shows precisely zero comments for more than three years.  Per WP precedent, such material has a netter home on your own hard drive than in userspace, as it appears to have garnered no interest in more than three years. If we do not consider three years excessive, should we set the time limit in userspace at, say, ten years and keep everything newer than that?  My own suggestion is for you to archive the page on your own computer, and, should anyone ask, offer to email it to them. Sound fair? Collect (talk) 00:20, 24 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Keep. It was linked from the article talk page and discussed. He put a key passage on the article talk itself, but Kaisershatner changed the text later on and only linked it: "It's a big step in the right direction. Let me know what you think of my changes to this compromise para: 29". This page is the beginning and a keystone to that long discussion section. It may not be directly relevant to the article as it stands 3 years later, but it's a significant step in the timeline of its development. Gotyear (talk) 18:49, 22 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Keep. This has had a use in discussion. As said above, it was used for talk page purposes. You don't delete archived talk page comments because they haven't been used in years. If someone really feels the need to do something with it, maybe a move (per Graham87) to something in the George W. Bush talkspace is justified. Otherwise leave it be. Rambo's Revenge (talk)  18:12, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.